"'It isn't drudgery, if a woman serves someone she respects,' concludes young Florence Vidor, ruminating over 'woman's eternal job' of washing, scrubbing, cleaning. Doomsday is chock full of situations and intertitles that, now, are guaranteed to induce gasps. For all that, it's a complex examination of sex-differentiated work roles in the decade that brought national woman's suffrage. The true wonder is that this extraordinary film can have fallen into such oblivion. Impoverished Vidor finds herself caught between two equally grim and objectified marriage options: as a clothes-horse 'spectacle' for a middle-aged British squire or as a 'drudge' for a young farmer. Playing the latter, Gary Cooper's courtship style leaves plenty to be desired: touring her around his half-renovated 'historic Doomsday farm,' he says, 'You're probably more interested in the kitchen, that's where you'll spend most your time.' If she's tempted by idle riches, it's also natural that she can't resist the killingly handsome Cooper, a single wayward strand of dark hair always alluringly disheveled across his brow. The love scenes have a rare sensuality, and Rowland V. Lee directs with a tight pacing and angles of entrapment. This little-known silent is worth a rediscovery." Scott Simmon